1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for obtaining the magnetic resonance (MR) spectrum of a voxel of an MR image, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for obtaining an MR spectrum of a single voxel by using sampled data obtained by using a predetermined sampling pattern.
2. Description of the Related Art
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is a method of non-invasively obtaining an image of an object body for showing, for example, the distribution of metabolites of body organs or biochemical information.
An MRS image (MRSI) includes in each image voxel thereof spectrum information of a metabolite. Therefore, in order to understand the distribution of metabolites or biochemical information of body organs, voxels having precise spatial information have to be obtained.
Single voxel spectroscopy (SVS) is a basic technology for obtaining an MR spectrum of a single voxel in order to identify the biochemical distribution of metabolites in a certain voxel.
Generally, in SVS, a three-direction selection is performed by using point-resolved spectroscopy (PRESS) pulses with a 90-180-180 degree sequence, and a signal is received from a voxel located at a portion where the three selected directions cross each other to obtain an MR spectrum.
When the three directions are selected, a chemical shift excitation occurs. Thus, due to the chemical shift excitation, not only biochemical information of the user selected region including the voxel but also information of a region outside of a user selected region may be obtained.
Therefore, it is difficult to obtain precise metabolite information or biochemical information of the region including the voxel selected by the user.
In the prior art, in order to reduce effects caused by the chemical shift excitation, spatial information is obtained through a phase encoding process after performing a single voxel excitation, and only spectrum information of a single voxel region that the user is interested in is obtained.
Also, in other prior art, a region that is larger than a single voxel region that the user is interested in is excited, and then, an amount of metabolite, which is reduced due to the chemical shift excitation, is corrected.
However, according to the above examples in the prior art, a time for acquiring data collected to obtain spatial information may be increased, and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) may be reduced.